GSA faces first two Polaris protests

Only two protests have been filed so far after the General Services Administration's award of 102 prime spots on the Polaris small business vehicle in December.

That’s a surprisingly low number of protests, given that companies submitted 569 proposals to GSA for the 10-year IT solutions and services vehicle. This first set of awards were in the general small business category.

GSA is working to make more awards in the coming weeks in specific small business categories such as women-owned, HUBZone and service-disabled veteran owned small businesses. Those awards could open up more protests as well.

Rigil Corp. and Assyst Inc. are the first two with challenges to the general SB awards. Both are challenging how GSA conducted the evaluation, but they are raising slightly different complaints.

GSA’s plan was to make awards to the first 100 firms with the highest-technical ratings and fair and reasonable pricing. The agency ended up with 102 winners because of ties at position No. 100.

Rigil alleges that GSA improperly scored its experience, which caused the company to miss the cutoff.

Assyst says it didn’t get credit for two of its projects, which meant its score also was too low to make the cutoff.

The companies filed their protests on Jan. 6 and the Government Accountability Office will rule by April 16.

After the Polaris solicitation was released in September 2022, it was hit with several protests that worked their way through the Government Accountability Office and then to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Polaris replaced Alliant 2 Small Business, which was cancelled in 2020 after it was hit with a barrage of protests.

GSA designed Polaris to provide agencies with a broad range of IT services and solutions, as well as a focus on innovation.